Hazel Evans Artist Inspire 52: Inspire 52 - Week 14. Home Is Where The Art Is

WARNING!!!
It's a long one this week, but there's plenty of adventure down a country road, out of a sinking canoe and into a little white boat, make sure you take your passport! I've got so much to say this week and with a little bit of reading between the lines, I hope you enjoy it.

So this week brings a new huge shift for me, in energy, emotion, and location. I have to relocate and I am hoping this new place will be a 'home' for me. Even though I'm really not physically moving very far, I will be moving to a new beginning for me and a new phase of my journey, so in this respect it is a fair size shift that I will be embarking upon... and I'm really looking forward to it.

I've just never been the 'settle down' or 'conventional' kinda gal I guess... which in turn has lead me on adventures and away from the sense of 'home'. I must say, I do long to find a home, but it's not really just about where you rest your head at the end of the day that makes a home a home. It's more complex than that. For me it's about feeling welcome and safe in a place that feeds my soul and enables me to be free to be me.

As I am getting older, I do feel that I am getting wiser about life! Don't get me wrong, I still have a lot to learn, but as I look back and reflect about places and spaces I have been, I can start to unravel and understand who I am today and how all of those experiences have made me who I am.

I have struggled for pretty much most of my adult life about understanding my 'purpose' in life. Despite having many great life experiences, I have spent many years feeling a disconnection between what is inside me and what is going on in my outside environment. Finding myself in situations that seem surreal and unconnected to what is true to me. I must admit that since coming back to England, about 6 years ago now, I have probably begun the most important journey of my life and yet ironically that journey has involved coming back to my home country.

"Life is old there, older than the trees,

younger than the mountains growing like a breeze ...

All my memories, gather round her
Modest lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye ...

Driving down the road I get a feeling

That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday

Country roads take me home to the place I belong ..."

Exerts from Country Road - John Denver

Something clicked with me this winter, my purpose started to show light in the crack of an opening doorway. I travelled back into times of disconnection and began to identify what was missing back then, and the answer was always the same. It soon became very clear that this there was this 'thing' that is the most important 'thing' in my life, it always has and probably always will be. It feeds my soul, makes me happy and enables me to be me and is my purpose. Now I know this all sounds very dramatic, but I have realised that there is no point to my life without art!

You may wonder why I'm making such a big deal of this, well recognising and unconditionally embracing my creativity is something that I have spent many years supressing. I have been surrounded by many business people in my life, people into economics who count and calculate everything and continuously watch the news! Who make statements like, "artists are over sensitive", "artists are on a different planet", "artists aren't in touch with reality', so as a result I resorted to taming my art spirit in order to conform and make other people happy. I even tried watching the news everyday, reading a newspaper a few times and becoming friends with a calculator! (the only downfall to many years of a news-less life is the other week when I found myself without petrol, but even that was a bonus, because it enabled me to slow down and walk to places instead of taking the car - healthy bonus!)

This has ultimately lead to feeling lost and disconnected to the life I want to live, and in the quest to make others happy, I found myself paddling upstream in someone else's river.

Hazel - Hazel River - art + someone else's river + a stack of newspapers + a bucket of calculators + old canoe = capsize + abandon ship

(.... ooh ... I feel a story coming on!....)

So, I got out of my old calculator and newspaper filled canoe, abandoned it on the side of the dark river and walked toward the 'purpose door' that was seducing me on the river bank with it's attractive warm glowing light from within. I peeked through the key hole first and saw something very different from the place I had been trying to conquer. I had been on a quest against the current, that the shadow once told me was the right way to go.

I pushed the door slowly open and a warm breeze caressed my face. I found myself on the bank of another river, but this one was bright and crystal clear. How come it was so different from the other one? I turned back to look through the door and I could see the shadow standing on the side of his river, surrounding him was also brightness and clearwater, yet when I looked further upstream, I could see my canoe slowly sinking into the muddy river bank where I has left it. The newspapers and calculators floating up to the surface of the waters and being swept away in the current. 'That was a narrow escape', I thought to myself.

I stepped inside the door, and closed it behind me. My feet filled with the feeling of butterflies and I looked down. There was a suitcase, it had my name on it, and lots of stickers of places I had already visited and others where I have not been yet. I opened it and inside was a passport and a ticket for travelling plans with my name on them. There were also pens, brushes, lots of paper and a cuddly cat and owl fluffy toys and a load of keys, all sorts of shapes and sizes, some old and some new. 'Bizarre' I said to myself then closed the case, picked it up and walked over to the river side.

I looked upstream I could see a little house on a hill in the distance, I figured that's where I needed to go. Before I even contemplated how I was going to get there, given that I had left my canoe behind on the other river, a little white rowing boat came floating down the river. There was no one in it but it just parked itself up beside me. Just then, a flap opened up on the side of it and out sprung a rolling red carpet that unfurled itself right up to my toes. This made me jump and I looked around to see if there was anyone near or in the boat, but there was no-one. I walked down the soft beautiful red carpet and climbed into the boat, and just as fast as it unfurled, the red carpet rolled itself back up and snapped shut inside it's hatch. I secured my suitcase under the seat and sat down. I was about to take hold of the oars when I head a voice, 'Passport please', I turned around, 'Passport please', knock knock knock, 'Passport please'. There was a little box, it was locked. I scrambled to open my suitcase. There were loads of small keys, at least 20 small ones, I thought this could take some time. I randomly took a key and tried it in the lock. It turned.

'Good morning, we have been expecting you' said a little blue elf with a pair of glasses. 'We have been waiting a long time, but hey, no time like the present hey?' 'Yes, I suppose not', I replied, stunned and curious at the same time.

'Business is business, so business first please, can I see your passport?'. I handed it over. 'I see, very interesting' he turned a few pages, 'right, okey dokes .... uhuh, I see... great stuff...' he stamped the passport on several pages, 'lovely jubbly', shut the passport and gave it back to me. 'Please make sure you lock this box after me, thank you and see you again soon', he smiled then jumped off the tiny stool he was standing on and skipped down a tiny winding staircase that seemed to lead beyond the bottom of the boat. I peered inside the box, but he was gone, so I closed the lid and locked it shut, safely put my passport and the key back in my suitcase and sat back down.

I took in a deep breath and took hold of the oars ...